Barbara Kay: Second
thoughts on surrogacy

I am uneasy about reproductive happiness
being restricted to the 1% who can afford the price that surrogate
mothers demand.

I know one such couple very well. They are in fact typical of the
demographic that goes in for surrogacy: educated, high-achieving,
mature, domestically stable, financially secure, yearning to parent. I
was saddened by their anguish in enduring one failed pregnancy after
another. And how could I fail to rejoice with them when a surrogate
produced two beautiful, healthy twin girls, 100% theirs biologically?

The outcome seemed to be a win-win. The well-paid surrogate mother
wasn’t emotionally invested. The babies have been welcomed into a
nurturing, comfortable home in which unbounded love and every desirable
social and material advantage is lavished upon them.

So what explains my ambivalence?

One factor is that relatively few surrogacies are altruistically
inspired. And as a good Canadian, I am uneasy about reproductive
happiness being restricted to the 1% who can afford to pay the price
that surrogate mothers typically demand. On the other hand, I wouldn’t
want to remedy this inequality by endorsing surrogacy as a reproductive
“right” that Medicare should fund, especially considering that
three-quarters of surrogacies fail.

Surrogates run a daunting medical gauntlet most people never hear
of, requiring months of preparation involving massive synthetic
hormone loads that can wreak havoc on the body

In a recent essay in the Weekly Standard magazine, entitled
“Womb for Rent,” Charlotte Allen notes that gay marriage likely will
soon be universally legal in the United States, as of course it already
is in Canada. This creates a new infertility category — “social
infertility” — consisting mainly of single heterosexual men and gay
couples (quips about “gaybies” and “surrogaycy” abound on websites). One
California surrogacy agency reports that gay couples constitute a third
of its clientele. One can therefore see the logical basis for gays
demanding surrogacy as a “right.”

But pregnancy is never risk-free, and surrogates run a daunting
medical gauntlet most people never hear of, requiring months of
preparation involving massive synthetic hormone loads that can wreak
havoc on the body (often repeated after failure). Plus, there is a good
chance of carrying twins, which involves its own special conditions and
discomforts, as well as a higher risk of pre-eclampsia and premature
birth.

Surrogacy in India, where some 25,000 foreign couples shop annually
(gays are barred), can be procured for as little as $5,000, a fortune to
penurious Indian women who are sometimes pushed into surrogacy by their
husbands. Scandalous clinic conditions have been exposed. Indian
surrogates often are not paid if they miscarry; they can be forced to
have unnecessary, but more rapid C-sections; and there have even been
reported surrogate deaths traceable to indifferent care for the
surrogate.

What with celebrities such as Elton John, Robert De Niro, Nicole
Kidman and Sarah Jessica Parker bruiting their happiness achieved
through surrogacy, and our culture’s growing solicitude for gay
entitlements, surrogacy is bound to win widespread social acceptance.

And yet I remain uneasy. Perhaps it has something to do with a
statement issued by the British couple, when queried as to whether they
would meet with their surrogates: “She’s doing a job for us. How often
do you communicate with your builder or gardener? She’ll get paid … We
don’t need to see her.”

An unidentified British couple will be travelling to Mumbai, India
next March to pick up some valuable merchandise they ordered a while
ago: their four biological newborn babies.

The 30-something couple, beset with fertility issues, decided on
gestational surrogacy as their best bet for biological children and,
hedging that bet, went with triple embryos in two surrogate wombs,
resulting in double twin pregnancies (reportedly delighted, they
declined offers to reduce the number).

Their case has raised concerns among medical professionals in
Britain, where the rules are stricter — they would not have been allowed
two surrogates in the same cycle. But it is not an uncommon situation in
India, where surrogacy is now a billion-dollar industry.

I must confess that while I hold unconflicted opinions on some
reproductive issues — I oppose the creation of purposely fatherless
sperm-donor children, for example — I feel ambivalent about gestational
surrogacy when the parents would otherwise remain childless, and the
surrogate carries the biological issue of both parents.

In Ontario, becoming a suppoter of the 48 private corporations that make
up the cartel called the Children's Aid Societies is a FREE way of
becoming a parent.

It's all stacked in your favour. First, Workers use the slightest excuse
to justify apprehending a child or children from loving devoted parents.

Its a Billion Dollar scam and for Example, the Children's Aid Society of
Ottawa gets around $80 million dollars directly for around 400 staff and
and a whole host of hangers on, foster mothers who are given the nice
cute well behaved kids and kept unnecessarily and sometimes then
adopted.

How can they do this? The average person is outraged when they learn
just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the criminality of the
Children's Aid Societies.

Its done by a culture of fabricating of evidence. To achieve victories
in Court they have their own "secret Courts" with their OWN JUDGES,
thats right.

Across Ontario lawyers for the Children's Aid Societies are appointed as
judges where they leave a trail of destruction to support very obviously
fabricated evidence.

In Ottawa the judiciary has as its head judge of Child Protection
Matters Madam Justice Heidi Polowin the former lead lawyer for the
Children's Aid Society. Then there is Justice Timmothy Minnema a former
lawyer for the Children's Aid Society.

Ottawa is not alone, across Ontario, former CAS lawyers have been
appointed to the Judiciary in droves.

Now, normally a judge can't hear a matter involving his old law firm but
CAS lawyers are so accustomed to being above the law, they exempt
themselves and hear CAS matters. It's an example of their own contempt
for the fundamental principles of justice.

If you think that's bad enough the Children's Aid Societies get to
select their judges for specific cases.

Lawyers for the Children's Aid Society fabricate evidence and engage in
practices that horrify local lawyers and they are above the law and out
of control.

If you want to adopt a child, contact your Corrupt child abusing
Children's Aid Society and become part of the Criminal Cartel of the
Children's Aid Societies of Ontario.

I disagree with most of your language, but agree with the
principle points. I work in the legal profession, and I can say
that CAS workers in Ontario are, for the most part, terrible. A
good case worker is the exception, NOT the norm. I've worked on
countless family custody cases where the case worker has
continually made matters worse between the parents. I would also
add (somewhat irrelevantly) that the system is designed around
the premise of keeping the children with the mother, and is
highly biased against the father, even if he is demonstrably the
better parent.

I have sat in cafes where case workers openly discuss the
contents and details of ongoing investigations, and use
defendant's names openly and with disdain. IN PUBLIC PLACES. I
have personally lodged six separate complains against four
different CAS case workers for doing so. It boils my blood, and
is utterly ludicrous that these people are protected and keep
their jobs. If I did that, I would be disbarred.

You're also right about former CAS lawyers become judges, and
their inability to admit that they should recuse themselves. I
had two separate cases that went in front of the same judge in
the OCJ. In both instances, by any standard or principle of
recusal, he should have stepped down. But he heard them and, not
surprisingly, had an utterly biased ruling in favour of the CAS
(he made 8 findings of fact that were absolutely unfounded and
were later overturned in the appeal). Upon appeal, both of the
cases were overturned on the basis of "obvious prejudicial
bias."